“All right, then,” I had said that Saturday morning when the Cleveland temperatures had dropped below zero but the sun shone brightly. “You’ll have to leave.”
It’d been a year I’d waited, after the return from rehab, the year going through the 12 steps, the aborted trips to the latest new age church, the weekly couples’ therapy sessions that just went around in circles and circles – this partner I loved had finally come to me and said, “I’m in love with Steve. I’ve always been in love with him.”
I had sighed. I knew it’d be a passing fancy, but it would be the hundredth passing fancy in the past ten years, and I’d had enough. I’d waited a year for him to come back to my bed – to feel the warmth of his chest, the soft resonance of his quiet voice, feel the contours in his abdomen – I had so missed the warm feelings. But something snapped in me, and I shooed him out, as I would a stray neighborhood cat that had wandered into the kitchen. Shoo!
And now the house is quiet, no disturbance rocks it evenings just after the cocktail hour, before the meal gets slammed down on the table, and I can hear myself chewing food and sipping my third vodka martini. And the pets, they’re quiet, too.
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